When the gavel finally came down on the craziest Devils season of all, it did not come as a shock.

Elimination had been haunting them for days.

“It’s been weird for three or four games now. Even though we weren’t out of it, we were out of it,” goalie Martin Brodeur said. “We tried to do our own thing, but after that, things have to fall into place. It didn’t, so we just have to move on.

“I think everybody expected what happened today. It’s not like it came in the last game of the season. We were just waiting for it. It was out of our hands for a long time.”

At one point, the Devils may have dreamed the Impossible Dream of making the playoffs despite their horrendous first half of the season, but in fact, it turned out to be impossible.

They were 27 points out of a playoff spot on the morning of Jan. 9 and came as close as six points on March 15 after staging a valiant turnaround, but they could get no closer.

A 3-1 loss to the Montreal Canadiens tonight at the Prudential Center, overshadowing the return of Zach Parise from knee surgery, officially ended the Devils’ chances of making the playoffs for a 14th consecutive season.

Their run, which began after they last missed the postseason in 1996, was the second-longest active streak in the NHL. The Detroit Red Wings clinched a playoff spot, extending their streak to 20 straight seasons.

“In the second half, there were a lot of positives to be taken into next year. We know that,” Patrik Elias said. “We just came up short. It was too big of an uphill battle for us.”

Ilya Kovalchuk, whose 29th goal of the season was all the Devils could muster, has had plenty of practice at missing the playoffs. He’s made it in only two of his nine NHL seasons, but that doesn’t make it any easier.

“I feel tired. Sick and tired,” Kovalchuk said. “We put so much into the second half and we came up short and it (stinks). But it’s going to make our team better.”

The Canadiens scored the first three goals, essentially putting it out of reach when Mathieu Darche scored a power-play goal 29 seconds into the third period for a 3-0 lead.

Curiously, coach Jacques Lemaire chose not to pull Brodeur in the final minutes of play for an extra skater. Trailing by two goals, Brodeur kept looking at the bench waiting for the signal.
It never came, which surprised him.

“Yes. I was looking the whole way,” Brodeur said. “There was still a lot of time to maybe try to figure something out, but he chose not to. That’s his decision.”

“(Because of) the way we were playing,” the coach said. “We were playing so bad I didn’t want another goal (against). I had enough. As a matter of fact, they had two chances at the end. They could’ve scored two goals.

“One game I did pull the goalie and we had a bad game. I promised myself in a bad game, I wouldn’t pull him.”

Even, it turns out, facing elimination.

Lemaire said the Devils played terribly, claiming only Brodeur played well. He said he was proud at the way they turned their season around, but puzzled at the way they fizzled out.

As for his players, they didn’t feel proud.

“You can’t be proud because our goal is to make the playoffs,” Brodeur said. “Regardless of how you get in, this is the first goal you need to achieve in the regular season and we have not done that. Right there it’s a failure.

“You always want that chance to compete for the Stanley Cup and that first step is the playoff and we didn’t make it, so it’s a failure of a season regardless of how we came back and made it interesting. We’re not going to play when the playoffs come and that’s what we want.”